Special Projects and Initiatives

Blog

This is day two of my new Google-based website implementation and I am still ecstatic about the value of this. I really am liking the ease of editing and doing a quick blog, right "inside" the architecture. Nice.

Our new Google-based website.. provides us with phenomenal advantage like integration with our iGoogle power dashboard, additional Google applications and tons of powerful third-party applications. I can already see the hand-writing on the wall.. much of the world will "Go Google" and its great to be a front-runner in this...and ahead of the rest.

Our Google website direction is amazing...chocked full of pleasant surprises for us and eventually for many stakeholders...that we get to first. from the smallest micro-business just starting up daunted by the old... to not-for-profits being held captive by WordPress, Drupal and Joomla developers...to medium businesses... to large business... to government...all paying way to much and looking to reduce their IT costs...and I predict even with whole nation-states. I finally decided to abandon my older-think website development and hosting direction and have "gone Google". Already this has proven to be incredibly smart, radically lowering my cost, and saving me a whole lot of time and empowering me with advanced capabilities that I could only dream about in the past.

And what a well-kept secret this as people continue to pay more money and waste more of their precious time on really dumb stuff like having their hard drive or their server crash.. and losing all their files.. and on paying all that money and spending all that time updating software licenses and learning bloated local applications with some functions they will never even get too, paying more and actually getting less value. I will keep blogging. Who knows maybe I'll be able to break through at the clutter.. and be able to wake some folks up...some of whom don't realize that they are still sleeping. All y'all can stick with the "Walking Dead" if you want to .. As for me, I am moving my business ahead thanks to Google. Let's connect if you are curious about what a Google direction will do you. Art - 425.780.6872

What's been on our mind recently is what can be done to help business owners and managers "Develop Business in a 21st Century World". The challenge and the opportunity is in figuring out how the boss himself or herself can be helped, especially where the line between personally helping the owner or manager and helping the business he or she runs or manages is most often non-existent. It's specially tough for the folks running their own businesses who have no bosses themselves.

They have to plan the business, create the structure, finance the business, build the support infrastructure, go after the business, deliver the product/service mix, serve the customer well, as well as get paid and the work doesn't stop here. On top of all this, today's business owner or manager is challenged to address an economy, a society, a culture, a technology marketplace, and the environment itself that are all undergoing phenomenal change. How can a small business owner make the right strategic choices and succeed?

The good news however that as challenging as this 21st century world is, it is also filled with "net new" opportunities: new communications and learning tools and strategies that if intelligently and strategically leveraged can really help today's small business owner or manager and their respective businesses grow and flourish. Of particularly interest to is a new Social Web 2.0 Internet environment which already for some has proven to be a "game changer" particularly with respect to how important information can now be found and learned about and how strategically important business decisions can now be informed and made.

What's new is all the new social media and social networking that is now possible that can potentially connect supply with demand without the intrusive advertising of traditional mass media and without all the unsolicited SPAM and phone calls of only a few years ago. Even newer are front-running early adopters, authors, and consulting firms ... and new ways to communicate and learn about social networking that help small business owners and their companies grow and flourish.

What's radically new about Social Web 2.0, and where we as a small businesses ourselves fit in, is that we ourselves via collaboration and networking can actually create our own and more trustworthy content based on very own experience actually working with various product/service offerings.... instead of allowing ourselves to be hyped by older-think, mass media television ads.

A good example of this is the contrast I recently experienced between viewing mass media ads on television plugging the power of 4G mobile networking and all the things it can do here in the Pacific Northwest, and then reading an excellent post on a Web 2.0 social networking networking site, based on another small business owner and consultant actually testing the new "solution" out using the latest 4G phone over the supposedly faster, higher-performance 4G network. The author did an excellent job and saved me a whole lot of time, money, and most importantly...frustration.

What I learned is that while the technology promised much, the kind of network speed and performance that I needed for my business application - e.g. video conferencing and smooth video streaming... was not here yet. This information was instrumental in helping inform business strategy, both for my own company as well as for a client depending upon me for timely and reliable technical advice on a new project we are about to start.

Experiencing this and other advantages of the new Social Web now has me thinking about ways that I can "walk the walk myself" using social media and social networking to make a difference not only in my own small business as a small business owner but also making a difference with other small businesses, adding value and serving them well. Now its got me publishing myself. Look out world, here comes a whole lot of great content focused on Developing Business in a 21st century world... and on delivering the mission-critical world a new world needs. Leveraging power of the Social Web and Web 2.0 is a great way to do that.

Here is my very first in-the-car blog, done while I was driving into Seattle from Bothell one morning with a whole lot on my mind about helping people and organizations "Walk Through The Virtual Door" using my virtualization services "on top" of web conferencing and web television infrastructure and hopefully making the distinction between just using "technology" and actually doing something with it. What I am talking about is the instructionally-designed "steps" that are actually distinct services that we provide: